Thermal Effects on the Soil Water Retention Curves and Hydraulic Properties of Benggang Soil in Southern China

Abstract

Soil hydraulic properties significantly affect the occurrence and development of collapsing gully walls. The effect of temperature on the hydraulic properties of soil in collapsing gully walls remains unclear. In this study, the hydraulic properties of the red soil layer, the sandy soil layer and the detritus layer in a collapsing gully wall were investigated using the filter paper method, and the soil water retention curves of the different soil layers at 25 and 40 °C were determined. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of temperature on the soil hydraulic properties of different soil layers in collapsing gully walls. The study found that when the water content in the red soil layer and sandy soil layer exceeded 20% and in the detritus layer exceeded 10%, the soil’s matric suction significantly decreased as the temperature increased from 25 to 40 °C. Additionally, the parameters of θs, α, n and m all exhibited a decreasing trend, and the soil water content in the detritus layer was primarily influenced by the temperature change, which resulted in a decrease of 38.10%. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the detritus layer exhibited higher values than that of the sandy layer and red soil layer under identical temperature conditions. Moreover, the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the red soil layer, sandy soil layer and detritus layer increased with increasing temperature. It was observed that the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the detritus layer increased by 0.18 cm h−1 at a soil water content of 44%. This increase in conductivity was more pronounced than the corresponding changes in the red soil layer and sandy soil layer. An elevated temperature caused the water-holding capacity of the different soil layers of the collapsing gully wall to decrease and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity to increase. However, the influence of the clay particle content within the soil of the collapsing gully wall rendered the temperature effect more distinct. Therefore, the destabilizing deformation of the soil in the collapsing gully wall during the summer under high temperatures and precipitation may have played a key role in its collapse.